On Sat, Jun 03, 2006 at 07:34:48PM +0200, Steve Bennett wrote:
The majority of Americans are fundamentalist christians. The greater majority are christians of any denomination.
Hmm. I'm curious what you mean by "fundamentalist Christians" in that claim. Do you mean people who answer "Yes" when asked, "Are you a fundamentalist Christian"? Do you mean people who claim to have certain beliefs which you label "fundamentalist Christian"? Do you mean anyone whose beliefs are more "fundamentalist Christian" than yours? Do you mean people who engage in religious practices which you regard as "fundamentalist Christian"? Or, perhaps, people who are formal members of organizations (such as churches) which label themselves such?
It would be interesting to know why christians are underrepresented at Wikipedia, if indeed that is the case.
The explanation could be as simple as this: Statistically, people who are more highly educated are less likely than the population average to describe themselves as Christians. Among Christians, they are more likely to be adherents to more liturgical or "high church" groups than to fundamentalist groups.
Many non-Christians in the U.S. (and other English-speaking countries) are immigrants from Asian nations where Christianity is not the dominant religion. In order to be a legal immigrant you more or less have to be seeking a job abroad; this usually requires a certain degree of higher education.
People who are more highly educated are more likely to have Internet access; to find the idea of encyclopedias interesting; to have the free time to participate in a volunteer project; to think positively of free-content enterprises; and to prefer Wikipedia's universalist notion of neutrality rather than preferring explicit recognition of a shared (nationalist or religious, e.g.) point of view.